.
Shuffle walk and peculiar habits
When I lived in Boston, Massachusetts I loved it there. Boston was and still is a very beautiful place. But, I have to tell you all, my first wife was peaking in her mental illness at that time, and in a lot of ways it was really rough for me personally.
For a long time I would drive to work, and drop her off at a "day care" mental facility. There she would interact with other people who also had various issues, and were taught by trained experts how to deal with life, and society. And there, she would make friends. All of whom, by the way had their own really serious issues.
For her, being around crazy people was NORMAL. For her, even though everyone knew they had problems, there was a normalization of it, and they didn't ever get an opportunity to compare themselves with others.
She had a friend. A girl. Now she had a very low IQ. Near moronic, but was nice otherwise. But being so low IQ, she attended the programs to help her cope in with real life. And my wife took a shine to her.
Watching those two together was agonizing. It was like watching two three-year old children trying to bake a cake. It's just a real time-consuming mess.
Anyways, I wanted to go and drive nine hours to visit my father. So I am going to take my wife. And that was that.
But imagine my surprise when she and her friend piled into the car.
Ugh! They were all happy and oblivious to the understanding that I had to be consulted in this matter. But, You know, I shrugged my shoulders and didn't say anything.
Trust me fellas... you NEVER want to argue with two bonified-crazy chicks.
Anyways, we drive to my fathers house, and unpacked. And then when my dad has a moment, he pulls me aside and looks at my wife, and her fried and asks me what the Hell?
They were oblivious. But happy.
I told him, with a shrug, "long story, But, she's here for the ride. Just roll with me."
He said "Ok", and rolled away.
It was a cluster fuck.
But I was so used to taking care of sick people that I had become numb to it. I didn't realize just how weird and fucked up it must look like to others. They were hyper, but walked like snails. They ate, but were very peculiar. They talked, but it was all garbled sentences with terrible structures.
And towards the end of the trip my father was with me, and looked over to then down the sidewalk. And he said to me "I don't know how you do it. You must have the patience of an angel."
And it was at that moment that I realized that my life must really look strange to the normal people out there. I mean, well, I suspected it. But it really hit home when my father told me.
Look, we always need a third person perspective on us; to shine a spotlight on us. So that we can see if we have a zit the size of a peanut on our nose, whether or not we smell, or we eat with our mouth open like a cow. We need that feedback.
Not just us, but nations too. Perhaps that is one of the big problems with the USA today. No real accurate feedback, just a reinforced narrative of "all is great" when in fact it really isn't.
Get that feedback. Force it. You will be a much better person for it.
Today...
What Google Search Is Like Now
Short skit. But real and you all must pay attention to this.
Which country is the strongest in terms of the military in your opinion?
In my opinion, it’s China. I know most people will say it’s America but they’re dead wrong.
America has the largest military budget. America has over 800 military bases around the world. America has 11 nuclear-powered supercarriers. America has over 5,000 nuclear weapons.
But America has not won a significant military victory since the Second World War. It has not faced a true military peer in combat. Most of its wars have been wars of insurgency involving guerrilla warfare or urban warfare where supercarriers don’t mean shit.
America currently has a military recruitment crisis. Young Americans don’t want to fight in dishonourable wars.
America currently has a military maintenance crisis. While it has fantastic military tech, its weapon systems are in dire need of maintenance with not enough money allocated for such. For example, naval ships are queued up in long lines for maintenance.
China has the world’s largest navy by number of ships. It has a stunning array of destroyers, frigates, corvettes, and submarines. China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232X greater than that of America. China can replenish its ships much faster than America can.
China has the most advanced hypersonic missiles in the world. China bristles with anti-ship missiles which largely neutralize America’s carrier strike groups.
China has the world’s largest army, as well as a stunning array of advanced armoured vehicles and tanks.
Despite having a smaller nuclear arsenal, China has more than enough nuclear weapons to wipe America off the map.
China only needs to defend its territory; China has no ambition to project power like America does. China has the strongest military because China is unassailable.
Decline of Dollar and Censorship
What is it like to have a classmate die in college?
I tried explaining to my girlfriend that when someone dies, most people they know get over it in a few days or weeks and life just goes on.
She argued vehemently that no, that couldn’t be the case. Strictly on philosophical grounds she wanted to believe that everyone who had ever been touched by knowing that person would be forever changed. Their lives palpably and permanently altered by that hypothetical person’s untimely death.
I was four years older, more experienced, and so I knew better. By that I mean that I let her win the argument.
Then it happened. She returned to college after summer break. In the school newspaper there was a brief memorial. One of her classmates - a young man she had grown quite fond of - had perished over the summer. A car accident. Death was instantaneous.
There was no service. No moment of silence. People talked about it detachedly for a couple of days. Then life went on.
A few days later I drove an hour to her college to pick her up for the weekend. She remembered the argument we’d had six months prior, and apologized to me for being so wrong.
Then she fell into my arms and cried. Her tears weren’t in mourning over the death of her classmate. She cried in shame over how badly she had misunderstood humanity; our need to heal quickly, to avoid pain, to get on with our lives.
That was in 1978. Six years ago, in 2012, she died unexpectedly. My life has as a result been forever changed.
The US Is MILITARIZING Scandinavia Like There Is No Tomorrow. What Are They Planning?
Dr. Jill Stein & Michael Hudson: Fighting Russia & China to Last American: Destroying US From Within
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: Today we’re going to talk with Dr. Stein, 2024 presidential candidate in the United States and her policy advisor, Professor Michael Hudson. And we’re going to talk about Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and domestic policy in the United States.
And so let’s get started with the conflict in Ukraine. Michael, how do you find the current face of the war in Ukraine? How do you find the policy of the Biden administration? It seems that they want to continue this war in Ukraine. How do you find it so far?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, despite the pretense that somehow Ukraine can still win, they know that the Ukrainians have already lost. The Russians are moving pretty much at will up to the Dnieper and then along the north shore of the Black Sea, all the way to Odessa. And once they move to Dnieper and Odessa, they’ve got really what they want in Ukraine. Now, there won’t be resistance.
So what does Biden mean when he said this will go on and on? He’s in agreement that just like Putin said it’s going to go on probably for 10 years, Biden says it’s going to go on for 10 years.
And the reason he’s saying that is because France and England both say that they’re going to come in, Poland is going to come in. And so the war in Western Ukraine is going to be not so much against the Ukrainian army, which is now pretty depleted, but against other NATO troops. And it’s going to be an escalation, and it’s going to be a forever war.
And the objective of the administration here is simply they believe that a forever war will keep depleting Russia’s arms and missiles and tanks and army so that it will be in a lesser position to defend China when Mr. Biden says that he intends to follow the military plans to attack China in 2025 and 2026. So the United States plan is for a forever war basically, extended from the Ukraine to China, and probably in the Near East, because Iran is the third main enemy designated by the United States.
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: Dr. Stein, how do you find the foreign policy of Biden administration in Ukraine?
JILL STEIN: As Michael describes it, this is absolutely Orwellian. It is terrifying. It reflects this mindset of a state of permanent war of a country that thinks that it is the sole imperial power, which is basically rampaging around the world and butting up against conflicts that are huge, that could go global, that could go nuclear. This is unfortunately a microcosm of that mindset.
It has been absolutely clear from the get-go that for NATO to continue to move to the East, violating the promise of the United States and NATO basically to Russia that it would not expand to the East, not one inch after the reunification of Germany, which constituted an existential threat to Russia, which was just recently recovering from the Second World War and the loss of some 20 million, maybe 27 million of its citizens after an invasion over the Ukrainian border.
So Russia is understandably touchy about its border, but no more touchy than the United States is about its borders. In the same way that the United States was ready to go to nuclear war, in fact, we had the nuclear bombs launched and in the air when it was discovered that Russia had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, we were ready to go to war to prevent that threat of nuclear missiles placed so close to our capital and to our country that there would really be no defense against a launch.
It’s exactly the same for Russia. This is understandable. This is what all informed Russia experts and Russia watchers had advised for years. It was considered insane to be butting up against Russia’s border and to be breaking the promise that had been made to Gorbachev.
It is an extremely warmongering, ill-informed, aggressive policy. When did this war surge? Actually, it goes back to 2014 and the interference of the U.S. in domestic Ukrainian politics in participating very much in the overthrow of the democratically elected ruler, president of Ukraine at the time, who simply wanted neutrality for Ukraine, which is essentially what Russia was asking for, was neutrality, not to take one side or the other. This war has been specifically ginned up by the U.S.
When the war in Afghanistan basically came to its disastrous end, as the whole war had been a disaster, when it finally wrapped up, that’s when the war industry cannot bear for there to be a peace dividend for the people of the world and the people of the United States. Instead, we were then plunged into this ginned up, absolutely unnecessary war, which could have been averted at any point.
Russia was begging for negotiations, which the U.S. basically refused to participate in. After the war had begun, there were negotiations that took place under the auspices of [Türkiye], where Russia showed that it did not want this war, it was ready to come to the table to negotiate and to compromise substantially. The U.S. and the U.K. basically shut it down.
This is a war being ginned up by the war industry. It’s absolutely a disaster. It’s part of an endless war machine that is impoverishing the American people and endangering the whole world. This could go nuclear.
As Michael was referring to recent statements by France and England, that France may be sending troops and that England was basically giving their blessing to the use of weapons provided by England to be used to attack the interior of Russia, it’s no surprise whatsoever that Putin basically said this is an existential threat and began to engage nuclear war exercises again, which is a horrifying development.
And there’s every reason for this war to end, but even as Ukraine is losing more and more territory now, you have Biden again, or Blinken, I think it was actually just the other day, declaring that there will be no end to U.S. support. And the Democrats, I must say, voted unanimously for this latest $61 billion to be thrown into this fire. It’s basically just fuel being thrown on a fire, which is a disaster above all for the people of Ukraine who are paying in blood here, essentially for the exercise of just military might on the part of the U.S. But it’s military might that is extremely ill-conceived and could be challenged by the other nations of the world.
The U.S. is no longer the sole power now, as it had been for prior decades. It no longer is. We’re living in a multi-polar world, no longer a unipolar world.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, what makes it so striking is that the polls show that I think over 80% of the American public wants the war in Ukraine to end, or at least the United States to stop spending the money in Ukraine. They also opposed the genocide in Gaza. And yet, despite what the public wants, we’re having a Congress voting completely the other way, in the inverse proportion to what the American public wants, not spending on war, spending at home.
What you’re seeing is that this is not democracy. This is not the idea that other people have of how America works. How is it that the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress together are taking a position almost unanimously against what the people want, and yet America does not have a parliamentary system like Europe, where you can get third parties and fourth parties and fifth parties to provide an alternative.
There’s not an alternative in the United States, which explains the problems that Jill is having. She’s the only anti-war candidate, and she’s trying to get on the ballot. And the Democrats and Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent any third party on the ballot, which really means any second party to the Republican-Democrat duopoly.
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: Dr. Stein, can you explain what you’re facing right now in New York?
JILL STEIN: Yes, exactly. And that’s exactly where I wanted to go, because New York, in many ways, is the last stand of empire. It’s empire’s last stand. This is where the most difficult rules have been concocted in order to make our elections extremely undemocratic, in order to keep alternatives off the ballot, because the forces of war and Wall Street know that they cannot beat us in the court of public opinion. So their solution is to simply prevent us from having a voice in this election at all.
And as Michael mentioned, we are the only anti-war, anti-genocide, pro-worker campaign that is on track now to be on the ballot across the country.
So New York is where the most difficult rules have been put together, basically in a poison pill that was inserted unbeknownst to most observers. This was not debated. It was not discussed. It was just rammed into a budget package in 2022 in New York State by the now disgraced Governor Cuomo, who basically tripled the requirement. So the requirement is now for 45,000 valid signatures. Valid meaning the signature has to match exactly the signature on the voter registration form. If you used a middle name on your voter registration and you didn’t use it in your petition, your name can be thrown off the petition count. And so 45,000 of these are required, which is why we have to double the numbers, because the Democrats are using every dirty trick in the book in order to use trivial technical details to challenge the signatures.
And they have hired, as they have actually had the gall to admit, they’re shameless about this, they have hired an army of attorneys in order to challenge these ballot signatures to try to prevent their competition.
So when people bemoan the potential of Donald Trump to advance fascism, it’s really important to remind people that we really have fascism. Democracy is under attack. It’s terrible to challenge the peaceful transfer of power, but it’s also terrible to throw political opponents off the ballot. This is another hallmark of authoritarianism that has been practiced shamelessly by both parties, but in particular, by the Democrats for a long, long time. So this is why New York is such a really, it’s a moment of decision. It’s like, will genocide, will endless war, will the crushing inequality, will climate collapse, will the plight of workers, will the assault on our democracy with the police state now being called in to bash heads on campuses for students who are simply standing up for what the American people believe, for what the International Court of Justice has validated, what the United Nations General Assembly and the steering committee as well, the Security Council has also validated for young people who are simply doing the job of democracy, exercising their democratic rights. Their heads are being bashed in by police forces, largely trained in part by the Israeli occupation forces in these horrible, dehumanizing, and abusive practices. Young people are standing up against that.
This is where the American people agree, we need to be doing the right thing here, yet we have a Congress and a White House that is completely, there’s a total disconnect here. What’s wrong with the picture is that this is unfortunately the state of American democracy. It is in a state of all-out emergency, and we need to reassert that democracy by getting out and overcoming these obstructions and getting these critical issues front and center in this election.
We are otherwise on track to be on the ballot across the country. We have 75 percent over that, in fact, of the total burden of signatures that are collected. But New York is the main obstruction right now, so I really want to urge people to go to Jill Stein 2024
, or you can also go to the New York Green Party, you can Google the New York Green Party, and join the ballot struggle. Not only sign a petition if you are a registered voter in New York, but anyone who is a registered voter anywhere in the country can carry a petition, and we need to be attaining that margin of safety now of 20 or 30,000 signatures in the next two weeks. So we already have the bulk basically guaranteed, but we need to go all out in the remaining time.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I want to ask one question that I haven’t had a chance before. You know, scientists have a policy, strategy to get rid of mosquitoes. They make sterilized mosquitoes, and they let them loose so that the mosquito breeds ends.
Now, I understand that there’s another candidate that has already got 100,000 signatures, RFK, and all of his signatures for the ballot, had been, they go up to people and say, do you want a third party candidate? Well, many people have signed not knowing that he’s the third party candidate. They’ve covered that up. Now, my question to you is, if somebody’s already signed a ballot for one of these sterile mosquitoes, and the same people signed for your ballot, does that, is that grounds for disqualifying the whole page of signatures?
JILL STEIN: Yes, it is. And there are very complicated rules in every state, and they are different in every state. In New York, it is true that if a registered voter signs for one candidate, they cannot also sign for the other. And exactly which one gets discounted, I don’t know. It may depend on which set of signatures gets turned in first. But this is just another one of the booby traps that’s basically built into the ballot access process here, which is essentially, it is a screen, you know, it is a filter to prevent grassroots campaigns from getting on the ballot.
If you are a member of the parties of War and Wall Street, that is, if you are a Democrat or a Republican, this set of requirements does not apply to you. You’re essentially grandfathered in simply by getting the nomination of your party.
But for Greens, for socialists, for alternative third parties, for libertarians, that does not apply. We have to attain this mountain of signatures.
Now, if you are taking money from billionaires and bankers, and you have a super PAC that’s doing the job for you, a super PAC, which can accept, you know, money from billionaires without, you know, any limit on it whatsoever. It’s essentially a conduit for big money and for corporations to pull strings from the inside. If you’re doing that, you know, you can be quite assured that you’re going to get on the ballot.
And, you know, we know that RFK has a billionaire running mate who can help fund this. He also has a super PAC with, you know, basically billionaire funders as well. In fact, there are two of them who are funding the majority, you know. So what kind of democracy is that, you know, when basically it’s powerful special interests who are funding you? That is a guarantee, you know, that your campaign will be serving, you know, nefarious purposes, basically.
So if you’re a big money campaign, you can game these rules. These rules essentially are designed to stop grassroots, true people-powered political movements, which is why we must overcome them.
And, you know, there’s a whole game plan here because the state of emergency of our democracy has everything to do with money. It has everything to do with limiting ballot access. It has everything to do with the corporate consolidation of the media, which, by the way, can be challenged on day one. We can instruct our Department of Justice to undertake essentially antitrust lawsuits against consolidated corporate media as well. So there are solutions. You know, we can get money out of politics by having publicly funded campaigns. We voted that in my home state. We passed it by voter referendum to have public funding. And then the Democrats, the progressive Democrats, repealed it on a voice vote in our legislature. I mean, for me, that was the final straw to know that I would never be a Democrat. And I had never been a member of, you know, of either political party because I grew up in the Vietnam era. Again, seeing the Democrats calling out the police state to crack the heads of protesters who were objecting to another genocidal war.
You know, so for me, it’s this fundamental corruption of the entire system, which is embraced by Democrats like Republicans and exactly why it is we need to prevail.
And by the way, I won’t go into it at this moment, but sometime today before we’re done, I want to talk about that there is actually a pathway forward. This is a black swan election, and the American people have shown every indication of not proceeding along predictable pathways. Witness, for example, the primary of the Democratic Party here in New York State, where there was a phenomenal 12 percent uncommitted vote, but there was an equally phenomenal 83 percent no-show compared to the voters who turned out to support Joe Biden in 2020. They are voting with their feet and the floor has fallen through in the Democratic Party and people are, you know, tearing their hair out for other options here besides these two zombie candidates being rammed down our throats. So people need to feel very empowered here about totally transforming the direction of our democracy.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, this seems to be a digression, but it’s not. It’s directly factored into what Nima’s question was about the war in Ukraine. Because New York is a Democratic Party state, and the Democrats and Ms. Biden have said that you are the main threat to Biden’s victory. Because if you get on the ballot, that means fewer people will vote for Biden, and they blame you for Donald Trump’s winning in 2016 under the fantasy that if people wouldn’t have voted for you, they would have voted for Biden, which of course is absolutely silly. There’s no way they’re going to vote for Biden.
Well, right now, you’ll notice that Biden and the Democrats in New York have done everything they can to promote the candidate of RFK Jr., a neoliberal libertarian, and who they think will take more votes away from the Republicans. So they’re all in favor of a third party candidate that will take votes away from Republicans. But they’re afraid of you. And as you know, the former managers of RFK have left his campaign to go over to your campaign. So you really have covered the whole third party scheme. And that’s what frightens the Democrats. That’s why this election shows, is America really a democracy or isn’t it?
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: We know that Biden is defining new tariffs on China, and these tariffs are going to influence the life of Americans. This is the same policy, the same old policy coming from the Trump administration. And right now, Biden is doing the same. What’s your take on these new tariffs?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it’s not only the tariffs against steel and against solar panels and e-mobiles. He also wants to confiscate TikTok, because it’s much more successful than any of the other major platforms in America. And both Biden has said that AIPAC and the Israelis are absolutely right. You must get rid of TikTok, because there are writers on there that say, we support the United Nations, and we support the International Court of Justice. They say that is anti-Semitic, because you can’t have any discussion that genocide is occurring or any criticism of Israel. They want to take over TikTok. So it will be stripped of any opposition to the government as Facebook and X and the other media are already there.
But what is so especially hypocritical is Biden says that, well, the reason we’re imposing the tariffs on China is because we want to industrialize the United States again.
The real reason is that he’s declared China the number one enemy, and he’s doing everything to do to sanction it. But the fact is, the pretense that somehow these tariffs are going to create jobs just exposes what’s gone wrong with the American economy. It’s been deindustrializing ever since the Clinton administration in the 1990s. And the last 30 years have basically concentrated wealth at the very top of the economic pyramid financially and left the rest of the economy.
The average employee is so expensive that if you were given every wage earner in America, all the food, all the clothing, all the transportation for nothing, they still couldn’t compete with any other country because of the two problems. The rents here are so high that they outstrip any other country, and the medical costs are too high, and the student loans are so high. If you have people entering the workforce who’ve had to pay $50,000 to $100,000 a year for four years and begin the workforce having to pay off a quarter million to a half million dollar in debt, how can their employers pay them enough money to live and still pay for their housing and the student loans?
There’s no way America can reindustrialize, and the United States is somehow trying to break off and isolate China and the whole global majority. If China, Russia, and the global South didn’t exist, they think somehow all the neoliberalized countries will be in the same boat, and yes, we will all be equally competitive, but what are we going to do about the 85% of the population? How can America compete?
I think Jill has some solutions.
JILL STEIN: Yes, exactly. I think that simply erecting tariffs, which will add further impediments to greening the economy, and it will also normalize a high cost for electric vehicles. It’s good for electric vehicles to be available at a price that everyday Americans can afford because if the price gets doubled, which is certainly what these tariffs will do because they’re 100% tariffs, it basically adds this huge inflationary factor to the American economy.
In terms of Michael’s larger point, you don’t create an industrialized economy simply by implementing a tariff. This is like the patient with multi-system failure on a bed in the intensive care unit. They have multi-organ failure, and you can’t just address one little superficial part of it. It needs a total reboot.
We need to address that cost of healthcare that makes American industries absolutely uncompetitive. We need to move to a Medicare for all system, which will not only improve our health, cover everyone in all capacities. There are huge holes right now in coverage, but it also cuts the total cost by half a trillion dollars a year. 30% basically of the cost can be recouped right away.
We need to address the issue of rent. Rents are completely going through the roof right now. Half of all renters are severely economically stressed, just trying to keep a roof over their head, paying over 30% of their income just for their rent, which doesn’t leave enough for putting food on the table after you’ve paid your student loans, etc. There are simple solutions that can be implemented nationally, including federalized rent control, including a tenant bill of rights so that evictions without cause basically are a thing of the past. There need to be accessible housing attorneys to assert tenant rights. We need to bring back public housing, which has essentially been prohibited by legislation that essentially makes it impossible for quality public housing, now called social housing, to be built.
There are practical solutions that we can put on the table to address that part of the uncompetitiveness of American industry.
Above all, we have a Green New Deal program, which will put substantial dollars, like trillions of dollars, initially in the first year to jumpstart an economic recovery program by training people and creating projects for greening our energy system, for phasing out fossil fuels within the next 10 years, for greening our agriculture so we can bring back family and community farms instead of this very destructive and unsustainable agribusiness that has basically put the family farmer and the Black farmer in particular essentially out of business. We can create the jobs that we need without creating these tariffs that essentially destroy the little bit of climate policy that’s underway currently.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, there’s still a problem in trying to do this, and that’s the debt problem and the related problems that you have.
Right now, you have in the New York Times and the other democratic media writers by the journalist Paul Krugman, for instance, that’ll say, why don’t the wage earners get it? 80% of Americans say that the economy is very bad and that their living standards are bad. Paul Krugman says, how can they say that? The consumer price index is stabilized at 3.5% and unemployment is down. Gee, many families can get two or three jobs to get by. What are they complaining about?
Well, all of the attention from the economic reports of the Federal Reserve every week or every month are the consumer price index, but there are no indexes that are published in America of the debt problem. Debt is not part of the consumer price index. The reason that Americans are so unhappy right now is they’re debt burdened. They’re so burdened that arrears and defaults are occurring for every category of debt, for student debt, for mortgage debt, for bank and credit card debt, especially for automobile debt to drive to your job to get it.
The fact that the debt service is going up is basically what is blocking the ability of employees to buy the products that they produce. There’s no circular flow there. It’s all siphoned off to finance at the top.
The consumer price index doesn’t show how prices is going up right now because the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates so high, the mortgage rate is seven and a half percent. That means that if you take out a mortgage to buy a house, in 10 years, the bank gets as much for the house as the homeowner who sold. The doubling time of seven and a half percent is under 10 years at compound interest.
Just imagine, at this rate, individual families cannot afford to buy a house anymore.
What you’ve had since 2008 is something amazing that no one’s talking about. In 2008, before the Obama bailout of the banks, the home ownership rate in America was 59 percent. The idea was that the entrance to the middle class was going to be owning your own home. But right now, with the interest rates so high, people can’t buy homes. The home ownership rate now is below 50 percent.
America is no longer a homeowner society. England, Scandinavia, Europe, 70 to 80 to 90 percent of the population are homeowners, not the United States. After Obama evicted 8 million American families to bail out the banks from the victims of junk mortgages and false credit reports and bank fraud, their homes were all picked up by private capital firms like Blackstone and others. And you’ve had these private capital firms playing the role today that landlords did in the 19th century England, before you had all the reforms of classical economics. So America’s gone backwards. The word neo-feudalism is picking up more and more in the papers.
We’ve gone backwards and are making it really impossible to achieve an economic recovery without almost a total systemic reform. And I know Jill has outlined particular elements of those reforms. But as she said, one or two fixes won’t work. You really need the whole system. And in order to have that, you have to have a discussion of what are the problems and what to do. There’s no discussion of the problems. That’s one of the reasons that we need a politician who can actually introduce this discussion into the overall discussion and debate about policy.
You have to realize the problems that are holding America back, not just saying, you should be happy. We don’t know why you’re not voting Biden back in.
JILL STEIN: And if I could just add quickly, I saw something, you know, flashed by my iPhone, on my iPhone screen about the stock market attaining some unprecedented height as of today. You know, and this is the mindset of our political class. You know, they live within the top 5%. And so the economy is doing great as far as they’re concerned. But, you know, we’re in an economy where 3 billionaires have the wealth and resources of half the population altogether.
And, you know, year by year, this is not getting better. This is only getting worse, because we’re now in this like vicious feedback loop right now, where the economic elites are basically giving the marching orders to the political elites. And in many cases, they are the political elites themselves, you know, the billionaires who enter into our political system, you know. And so inside of the political system, they are then generating the policies that further concentrate wealth and the advantages of the oligarchs, you know. So we’re in a situation right now of oligarchy and empire. They go hand in hand in the same way that Martin Luther King said, you know, that we have this triple evil of militarism, materialism, extreme materialism, and racism, basically.
And, you know, and the system is like an airplane going into a tailspin right now on its way down. And we got to pull out of that, out of that tailspin. And it really requires a systemic fix. And that’s why, you know, that’s why we’re in this race. That’s why we need to be on the ballot in New York. That’s why we need, you know, every one of us to do everything possible, you know, to jump into the mix here and to, you know, get the airplane into a pull-up, we need to pull up out of this tailspin while there’s still time.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, basically the real voters are the donor class, the billionaires that you’ve mentioned, because they can give money to back the candidates. And money is what buys television time, buys people to get the signatures on the ballot. And you could say it’s a democracy for the oligarchs, but that’s called oligarchy. And not only do these sort of unelected billionaires end up deciding who gets to be on the ticket in the primaries, depending on who they’re backed, but there’s also the blob, the secret government, the damage of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the deep state.
And one of the programs that Jill has suggested is a new Church Commission. We need something like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. What has the CIA and the National Security Council been doing behind our, to try to push for these regime changes all over the world that lead to the American involvement in wherever there’s been a regime change in one of the 800 military bases the United States have all over the world?
JILL STEIN: And to add to that, it was a big wake-up call for me when I discovered this kind of the hidden history here that the CIA has essentially overturned, the count is somewhere around 70 countries now since the Second World War. If you look at South America, one of the shining examples in South America is Costa Rica, which basically doesn’t have a military because when they had their revolution against their military, and I think it was 1952 or -3, something like that, but it was just before the CIA was created. And that’s why Costa Rica sort of stuck in under the wire. They actually had a socialist revolution. They dismantled their military. They put their national resources largely into the social needs of their population.
Whereas, go not too far away, you have Guatemala where the democracy, the democratically elected president, Arbenz, I think his name was in 1954, just a year or two later, he was then subject to regime change by the US acting on behalf of United Fruit, which did not want to see land redistributed out of the hands of corporations and into the hands of everyday people and peasants.
And it’s taken, what is it now, 70 years for Guatemala to recover. I think Guatemala just elected a real reformer. Let’s hope that holds steady. But this is not a simple thing when the US is in the business of overthrowing other democracies.
And so we badly need not only a Church Commission, we need to re-engage congressional hearings in general on substantive issues. One of the products of the Church Committee, which was the creation of these intelligence committees in the Senate and the House, they were supposed to do the watchdogging, but they’ve now become full collaborators in these plans and are not doing the watchdogging that desperately needs to happen. So we need to reconvene meaningful congressional hearings in the same way that we also need to hold the feet of elected representatives to the fire by forcing them to meet with their constituents.
We used to have an institution called town hall meetings. They are not used anymore because congressional reps and senators are way too busy raising money from their billionaire donors and their corporate donors, the surrogates for the corporations at any rate, the executives of corporations. That’s where they’re spending their time instead of actually meeting face to face with their constituents.
So we have some very serious problems here, but there are real solutions that we can bring to bear simply by virtue of the power of the presidency, the executive power, or the bully pulpit to really compel certain institutions to get started again to begin this process of recovery for our democracy.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I think there’s a reason why you just mentioned that the Congressional Oversight Committees aren’t doing their job. That’s because in the Democratic Party and the Republicans, every politician, in order to get on a committee, has to contribute. Given 100,000, 400,000 committee chairmanships, you have to raise $500,000.
Now, who has this money to give them? We’re back again to the PACs, the political contributors that determine who’s suggested. Now, the military-industrial complex will give so much money to their selected politicians that the politicians can buy their chairmanship of the committee, and other congressmen or senators can also use the money that their contributors give to the committee.
And this has been discussed for a long time, the corruption of Congress and why Congress does not represent the people.
There’s also a parallel to this that’s occurred recently, and that’s the same thing of billionaires determining policy has occurred, as you’ve seen in the last month, over the entire educational system of this country. You’ve seen all of the demonstrations opposing the genocide in Gaza, and you’ve seen two university presidents already fired because their donors of the university have said, We are not going to give you funding unless you fire, you take the names of all of the students and give us the names and expel them from the university because they’re opposing, they’re supporting the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Support of the United Nations is anti-Semitic. You must fire them, and you must fire any faculty member that opposes American military policy.
Now, this has happened in one campus after another. Columbia is obviously the most notorious, but the first was Harvard. I think Bill Ackman, a fund manager, said, I’m withdrawing all my money from you if you don’t fire the president and put faculty members and a curriculum that I and my colleagues approve of. The same thing at Columbia. They threatened the donors of one of their hospitals, said, we’re not going to give you the half million dollars we promised or the 10 million to finish your diabetes hospital unless you fire the protesters who say, if you say that Palestinians are human beings, that’s anti-Semitic.
Congress has just proposed a law saying that to say “from the [river to] the sea” or to defend the Palestinians is, by definition, a criminal anti-Semitic act. This has actually been proposed in Congress. There’s very little chance of the Senate passing this because the Senate is not quite as nutty as the Congress, but I don’t think the rest of the world realizes how radical this change is and how nothing like it has ever, ever occurred before in American history, not even under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1920s.
JILL STEIN: Wow.
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: One of the other dimensions of this economic problem in the United States would be de-dollarization. We know that Putin and Xi are so hand-in-hand to de-dollarize their trades. And recently, Putin just said that in two years they could reduce their dependence on US dollar from 54% to 13%. That’s huge. And what’s going on, Michael, right now, considering Russia, China and Brexit?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, here’s what I don’t understand. Biden repeatedly says, “China is our number one enemy,” “Russia’s our number two enemy,” you’ve seen the United States and its Europe satellites already confiscate all of Russia’s foreign exchange that’s held in Europe and the United States. Why doesn’t China fear this?
As you point out, it’s moving gradually to de-dollarize, but if America is actually going to go to war with a country, of course, it’s going to grab its foreign exchange and foreign reserves, just as it grabbed the foreign reserves of Iran, Venezuela, any other country, Libya. We still don’t have any idea what happened to Libya’s gold after Hillary Clinton and the French got in and devastated the country.
It’s obvious that the world is splitting into two parts, and this split in the world part is affecting the U.S. banking system very substantially because the International Monetary Fund just recently came out saying, finally acknowledging the third world countries, that is, the global south, cannot afford to pay their dollar debts. The flow of money is from the debtor countries to the creditor countries, not the other way around.
Every calculation shows that if the global south countries do not default on their dollar bonds or stop paying the dollar bonds, they will have no money at all for social spending of any form. And in order to prevent the currency from collapsing, just like the German mark collapsed when they tried to pay reparations, the global south countries are paying reparations for 75 years of financial colonialism under the way that the United States has forced a false austerity program on them, a false economic doctrine that austerity and cutting labor’s wages is the way to get rich.
The way to get rich is the way that America and Europe did. You raise labor’s wages to make it better schooled, better dressed, better fed, healthier. That’s the way to raise our productivity.
But debtor countries lack the money to do that, and they’ve followed the directions of the IMF and the Washington consensus. And they have every right now to say, we’re going to put our own population first, not the creditor nations. We cannot afford to pay the dollar debt without bankrupting our economies and having a revolution here.
I’m sure that right now when President Putin is meeting with President Xi, they’re discussing how to de-dollarize. Well, I think that if countries are going to, global majority countries, realize that, okay, we’re not going to pay the debts, the United States is going to essentially confiscate what they have in this country and do to them what it did to Venezuela and even Argentina.
So the result will be, anticipating this, I would expect global south countries to say, by the way, we have our gold in the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England or in Africa, the Bank of France, could you please return the gold to us? Get your gold out, sell your American securities, especially China will sell its billion dollars worth of treasury bonds and convert it into something else. Like, certainly 40% of it will probably go into gold. The rest will be to develop infrastructure throughout the Belt and Road.
Now, if that happens, and there’s no way that it can avoid happening, not paying the dollar debts is going to lead to insolvency for a lot of American banks. There will be a financial crisis here. If you can imagine, the government’s going to say, who are we going to put first, the banks or the voters? You can guess who they’re going to put first. And so this is going to be what the next administration is going to have to confront from as soon as whoever wins takes power next year.
JILL STEIN: And I’ll just throw in that this is sort of the ultimate dysfunction and incompetence, really, of our national so-called leaders who don’t have a clue about how to be a team player, whose military policy is formally described by the term full-spectrum dominance. That is, that the U.S. will dominate all potential areas of competition. We’re all about dominating competition and essentially squelching competition, as opposed to having some kind of a notion of collaboration or cooperation.
It’s as if the leadership of the U.S. and its allies are people who don’t have a clue how to be team players and who have to dominate their relationships, which is not a good way to make friends and influence people.
For many decades, the U.S. has prevailed coming out of the Second World War, where basically all other powerful countries were destroyed and we were protected by our distance from the conflict. So we emerged unscathed and became the global dominant power.
Well, time has run out, basically, and the curves have now crossed so that it is China and its allies, the BRICS Association, essentially, and much of the global south that is increasingly productive and prevailing and now actually has a larger GDP than the U.S. and its allies.
So, you know, we’re kind of running out of steam here in this illusion that we are kind of the dominant global player.
Our leaders could not have done a better job of mobilizing our chief competitors and bringing them together in alliance against us.
And sooner rather than later, for all of us, we need to have an enlightened administration that’s capable of being a team player and can be part of the global economy in a way that’s not exploiting, preying upon, and seeking to destroy the rest of the world, which is basically what the full spectrum dominance position says. That any rising power, even on a regional basis, will not be allowed to rise and that we will basically squash that power.
So this is not working out good for us. And what Michael has just described about, you know, the looming de-dollarization should be very good reason right now for people to stand up and demand that this incredibly dysfunctional, immature and incapable regime in the U.S. just be, they need to be retired. They need to be moved out of positions, not only of power, but positions of really controlling our lives and potentially destroying our lives, largely through conflicts that could blow up on us in many places around the world right now.
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: Michael, when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine, we know that they’re saying that the United States is willing to fight the war in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian. Right now in this economic war of the United States and China, especially, Putin in his interview with Tucker Carlson said that we are looking for some compromise and cooperation with the United States. He, in his last visit to the United States, was seeking some sort of compromise and cooperation with the United States. The question here would be, is the United States willing to sacrifice each and every life in the United States in order to fight Russia and China?
MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s willing to fight every, fight to the last American too. Yes, it is. These are, the neocons are people who have, let’s say, not more than a chip on their shoulder. They really have a fear that if they don’t control the world, the world will do something that they might not like. There’s a desire for control of other countries and a fear that there’s really a different economic system than the system that has concentrated all the wealth in the hands of the 1%.
Well, it’s called socialism. And since China calls itself a socialist economy, the danger is that other countries may do what China has done and have the monetary system and the banking system a public utility.
Well, we have some people here like Ellen Brown that have talked about public banking. The one fear of the 1% who have made their money financially is that other countries will create a system where the economic surplus is used to raise the living standards of the population as a whole, instead of concentrating it in the 1%, especially the 1% that lives in the United States and is concentrating it all here.
This means the end of their dominance. And it’s more than total spectrum. It’s total control and total concentration of the wealth and decision-making power.
And the neocons want an economy that shifts resource allocation and policy out of the hands of Washington and other financial centers into the hands of Wall Street, England, the Paris Bourse, the Bank of Japan. The fight is over who’s going to control the economy. And this is where they’re willing to fight to the very end, just like the Roman oligarchy was willing to fight civil war rather than to give in, cancel the debts that the population was demanding in the civil wars that erupted in the first millennium BC.
So, yes, it’s literally a war of civilization. And you’ve had the Americans in the 1990s, the American phrase, the end of history. We’ve won. We’ve won, and now we can take over the world.
Well, now they’re saying there’s a fight of civilization, and they’re treating it just as you’re having in America and the whole world just like what you’re seeing in Israel, a fight between two irreconcilable systems.
Well, America says our democracy, which is their euphemism for oligarchy, is incompatible with autocracy, their word for socialism and a government policy run to try to uplift the economy as a whole. That’s the fight that we’re in, and it’s a fight that’s going to go beyond this election year.
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: Yeah. Dr. Stein, what would be your policy considering compromise and cooperation with the rest of the world, with the global majority?
JILL STEIN: Well, I mean, it’s clearly the only way forward. The U.S. is no longer the dominant economic power, nor are we the dominant military power. We sort of have parity with Russia in terms of nuclear weapons, but there are all sorts of other weapons right now where Russia seems to have the upper hand in the super fast missiles and so on. And it’s a crazy system in which we can all spend ourselves into oblivion in this endless arms race, which has basically been reengaged now for at least a decade or so.
But I think at the moment where we are right now, we can’t assume that we have parity or that we have adequate defenses against Russia’s super fast missiles. And this is not to reengage that arms race. That is not the solution. That’s never going to solve it. We’re already spending down in our own country the resources that we desperately need for housing and for health care and to deal with the climate crisis and so on. We need those resources.
In fact, we need to be demilitarizing. And so the foreign policy that we are advocating is a foreign policy based on international law, human rights and diplomacy. And what we see going on right now in Gaza is not only a death watch for two million people whose lives are on the line now by the hour, really, because there’s no water, there’s no food coming in. And now the little trickle that was getting into the country has basically been shut down by Israel when it took possession of the Rafah gate. And, you know, so I mean, this could, an epidemic, you know, cholera or whatever, you know, there’s just anything could happen now. People are malnourished. They don’t have food. They don’t have shelter. They’re being bombed. They’re being targeted. They’re being shot at like fish in a barrel. It’s just, you know, unconscionable what is going on here now.
And this is sort of a symbol of where U.S. militarism goes. It’s, you know, this is kind of the tip of the iceberg. It’s not the first genocidal war. You know, we killed three million people in Southeast Asia, you know, in that war, which was simply, again, about an exercise of U.S. power, really without a rational reason for it. And in all the wars since, we are spending down the resources of the American people in this foreign policy based on essentially militarism and the control of economic markets and resources. That’s what the game is about. It is an absolute disaster. We have lost every single one of these catastrophic wars, certainly since Vietnam and including Vietnam, but all the recent Middle East wars, which have been just a series of disasters.
And you have a media now, a mainstream media, which is, it is a lapdog. It’s not a watchdog. And without a vigilant media, you know, the public is endlessly misinformed and disinformed by our, you know, our security state and by the Pentagon writ large. So we need fundamentally a foreign policy based on international law, human rights and diplomacy.
And Gaza shows us where we are going in the absence of that. It’s not just two million people whose lives are on the line right now in Palestine. It’s also the lives and the future of Israelis, because when you have Egypt, the major partner of Israel in making peace with its neighbors, when Egypt is now joining the lawsuit with South Africa, and when Egypt has actually threatened several weeks back to tear apart its treaty with Israel, if Rafa proceeded, you know, they have good cause to do that.
Now you have crowds in Jordan where people are also demanding an end to the peace accords with Israel. So it’s the lives of Israelis who are also in the target hairs and absolutely people all over the Middle East. And because nuclear weapons could easily be triggered here, it’s really people all over the world. And if we are in the business of destroying international law and human rights, which is happening in Gaza right now and in Palestine, where we are normalizing the torture and the murder of children on an industrial scale, if we allow that to go forward, we’re basically normalizing this in a future where we are no longer the dominant power. So all of this needs to be seen as fundamentally a threat to the future of civilization and the threat to we ourselves, who are no longer top dog in this setting. So we need to start, you know, working for a world that works for all of us, like our own lives depend on it, because in fact they do and they will increasingly, going forward.
NIMA ROSTAMI ALKHORSHID: Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, I can bring Saudi Arabia into all of this. Jill didn’t mention it, but you’ve seen Saudi Arabia is in a squeeze. All of its national wealth, its government money, is held in the United States because when it increased the oil prices in 1974 and 75, it was told that you can charge as much as you want for your oil, but you have to keep the proceeds in the United States. We’re not going to let you buy any American industry that’s important, any company that’s an American company. You can buy treasury bonds, you can buy overall stocks, you can buy real estate like the Japanese have done and lost their shirts on, but you have to keep your money here, then charge whatever you want as long as we get all of what you charge.
Well, now they’ve done that since 1974. This is 50 years of their savings are there. Now suppose that their population that’s largely Palestinian rises up as they may do in Jordan or in Egypt. Well, if they rise up, they’re going to give pressure. You have to take the Palestinian side and break relations with Israel.
Well, if they do that, the Americans are holding all of Saudi Arabia’s and Kuwait’s and the United Arab Republic’s money in the United States hostage. They can do to the Arab countries just exactly what they did to Russia and Venezuela, simply confiscate it.
At a certain point, if Saudi Arabia that I think has applied for membership in BRICS, if it does indeed support BRICS, what is it going to do with the foreign reserves? Well, obviously the BRICS are going to say, we want you to keep your savings as part of the new civilization. I think if they anticipate doing that, they should begin to withdraw their savings in the United States. Again, put it into gold and other or each other’s currencies.
Well, you can imagine what that will do to the dollar. And if the dollar goes down, there goes the American price index way up. So the cost of America supporting the war in the Near East, and it’s really America’s war. Everyone says they’re blaming Netanyahu and it’s Israel’s war. All these bombs are Americans. It’s the Americans that tell the Israelis where to bomb. It’s the Americans that tell Israeli leaders, and I’ve heard them tell Netanyahu’s leader in person, you are a landed aircraft carrier. I’ve sat in on these discussions.
And the Americans want this war against Palestine. It’s the first step of greater Israel taking over Near Eastern oil on behalf of the United States. Obviously, it will get some for itself. But this is America looks at oil as the key to the world’s energy and hence the world’s industrial production. And if it controls oil, as well as food, then it can have a stranglehold on countries that do not produce their own and non oil energy and do not produce their own food. So this is the implicit threat to the Americans of the bricks and the new economic order. And it’s the promise to the global majority that yes, there can be a new civilization. We don’t have to do what America and Europe is doing. We can make our own fate. That’s what the whole fight is going to be about. And it’s going to be fought in the financial area, the trade area, and I’m afraid the military area too.
JILL STEIN: And just to underscore what Michael is saying here, Ronald Reagan himself said the quiet part out loud in the 1980s, when he said that Israel is the unsinkable battleship for the US in the Middle East. And I think it was Joe Biden himself who said, and I’m not sure when he said it, but that if we didn’t have an Israel, we would have to invent an Israel.
Again, this is all part of that major game plan of full spectrum dominance. The US will not allow any other power to rise in any region and take command of important global resources. So even before greater Israel, even with the lesser Israel, you have basically a very powerful military outpost for the US in this region of major oil resources, where the US is positioned to essentially control the flow of oil.
And that war is already taking place right now. And the skirmishes between Yemen and Israeli ships or other US and allied forces, it’s a taste of what’s to come if this is allowed to proceed. This is an absolutely suicidal, homicidal foreign policy that is just, we’re doomed here with this, because the world is armed and angry right now. And this needs to be put to a stop. We need adults in the room here who are able to approach international relations and diplomacy as adults and as members of a team in a multipolar world that just is the condition of the world today.
And we need entirely new leadership. Our current leadership needs to be removed from power as soon as humanly possible, so we can have a future not only to thrive in, but a future that we can actually survive in, because that is all very much imperiled right now.
MICHAEL HUDSON: No wonder they don’t want you on the ballot.
JILL STEIN: Exactly. If we’re on the ballot, mainstream media cannot lock us out. They will condemn us. They will vilify us. Bring it on. That’s all just fine. But they will seek to make us unknown. And currently we are unknown. We have, I think, the highest “do not know what that candidate is about” in polling of any of the candidates. And that’s the way they want to keep it.
Even some of the so-called liberal outlets that typically cover kind of a greater spectrum, they’re not talking about us. They are talking about solo voices in the wilderness who have the political positions that we do, but they’re not talking about us because we are actually on track right now to be on the ballot across the country. And New York is their last holdout. So again, I want to encourage people to go to Jill Stein 2024
and get out for a day or 10 days, whatever you can do to ensure that there’s a margin of safety, because if we are on the ballot, they cannot lock us out. And everything that we’ve been talking about here today, you will then hear about the mainstream media will be forced to cover these issues. We want this to be front and center. It has to be front and center. This has to be discussed. The minute it’s discussed, it’s unstoppable. In the words of Frederick Douglass, power concedes nothing without a demand. We need to bring that demand into political discourse. But in the words of Alice Walker, the biggest way people give up power is by not knowing we have it to start with.
And we do have enormous power, not only 68 percent, depending on which poll you look at, but there’s a strong majority of Americans that wants an immediate ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the genocidal war going on now by Israel on Palestine. There’s a huge majority there. There’s, you know, 44 million young people who have no future locked into student debt. And in fact, people under 25 now, 50 percent describe themselves as hopeless. 25 percent have considered harming themselves physically within two weeks of the poll. What does that tell you about the status of our civilization, where young people are basically being devoured by a predatory economy? What society, you know, lives on and perpetuates itself by devouring its young? But that’s now become, you know, the latest cash cow for the ruling elites.
If you look at health care, 87 million people who do not have adequate health care coverage, 100 million locked into debt.
So there is the makings here of a huge super majority, you know, even in a two-way race. But we’re going to be in a four-way race where a vote divided four ways can be won by as little as 26 percent. And in Wisconsin, for example, we’re currently running 22 percent among people 30 and under, people who sort of can say which way the wind is blowing, you know, who predict which way trends are going. And we’ve been running, I think, eight percent overall in Wisconsin. It’s not a huge leap to go from eight percent to 25.
This is entirely feasible, given that people revile the zombie candidates being forced down their throats right now. And this is, you know, this is the makings of a perfect storm to really demand the deep political change that actually is possible right now. And for us to have the courage of our convictions and to, you know, take the example of the students who will not be shut down, who are continuing to fight, you know, and a poll just came out, I think, today showing that the American people overwhelmingly approve of, you know, this fight by the students and, you know, and the effort to shut down this genocidal war. So if we stand up with the courage of our convictions, we really can change the direction of the future. And there’s no better time to make this happen than right now.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think I should point out a technicality many people may not realize. It is unlikely that you will be elected as president, but that’s not, that doesn’t mean that either Biden or Trump will be the next president, because if you have enough delegates in enough states that actually go into Congress, then, and neither Biden nor Trump has more than 50 percent, and each of them have, you know, we’re talking about most American elections are 51 percent versus 49 percent. If you can get enough candidates, then the whole election is thrown into the House, and it’s a grab bag.
And that means that you’ll have the same position that a third party will have in Germany or England. You can say, well, if you want my vote to elect you or whoever the compromise president is, which may be neither Biden nor Trump, then here are the policies that I insist on in having to give my vote.
So you don’t have to be elected president. You just have to win enough delegates to be able to be in a position to dictate your terms, and as the trade-off time comes in November.
JILL STEIN: Yeah. And if I can just add on to that, the name of the game here, I think, is standing up and pushing against this very corrupt and dangerous system as much as we possibly can. It is entirely possible, it may not be likely, but it is possible to actually win the office especially in a four-way race, where three candidates are going to be splitting the pro-genocide, pro-war vote. It’s entirely possible that we could prevail over that, but it’s also possible we will fall short, but we come up with something like, say, it’s 6 percent of the vote or 10 percent of the vote. That is a huge leap forward. And typically, that is the way that political movements build. They attain one count in one race, and then in the next they attain greater. And in the system that we have right now, it is so biased against independent people-powered politics. It’s taken many runs to just get to this point, but this is a point at which we can continue to build. So the name of the game, in my view, is what Alice Walker said, that the biggest way we give up power is by not knowing we have it. We do have that power, and it’s absolutely critical to stand up and fight for it, like our lives depend on it, because, you know, in fact, they do more than ever.
Why would anyone want to live in a trailer park?
I lived in a trailer park for 14 years.
Living in a trailer park was the smartest decision of my entire life.
Why? Because thanks to my willingness to live in a trailer park, fix up and pay off two successive trailers, I was able to gradually build up enough equity to buy a house. This was in spite of being a single income gal in a double-income world; having no available help from family**; living in a high-cost, very desirable area; and working in a career I loved but that didn’t pay well.
First I bought a $5,000 trailer that had to be moved - hence the super-cheap price. I was able to arrange a lease on some property for the next five years.
When I eventually had to move elsewhere for work, the trailer had to leave the property but I was still able to sell it for $1,000 more than I paid. I had done some upgrades and added a small porch.
I had long since paid off the trailer, so the $6,000 was all mine. If I had rented an apartment over those five years, I would have walked away with nothing.
I put that $6,000 and some savings into a down payment on a much larger and nicer trailer (960 square feet with extensive decks) on a large corner lot in a mobile home park. I lived in it for nine years while working in my new community.
I paid it off and fixed it up. When the real estate market cycled up, I sold it for $5,000 more than I had paid for it. Again, if I had rented over those nine years, I would have had nothing.
I was self-employed at the time, so I moved to a nearby community that I had already identified as having lower housing costs. From the sale of my trailer, I put a substantial 30% down payment on my first house.
I’m still living in that house.
If I had not lived in a trailer park, I would not have my house. Without my house, I would be at the mercy of what is currently a tight and very expensive rental market. I would not have my beloved pups.
I put a suite into my house so it generates some income, which is useful since my job vanished in a corporate reorganization. The rental income is a bonus support as I’m venturing back into self-employment as I near retirement.
I have a mortgage but it is low. I have more than $400,000 in equity.
I’m far from wealthy…but I’m not at risk of being homeless either.
I recommend trailer parks to everyone who has limited income/resources but needs a toehold in the housing market.
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**For the record, my family likes me just fine but there are some life-challenged offspring in the tribe who need help more than I do, so any extra resources go their way.
Easiest Homemade Pizza Dough
Yield: 2 medium pizza crusts or one extra large pizza crust
Ingredients
- 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
- 1 to 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour, divided
Instructions
- Combine yogurt and 1 cup flour in the bowl of an electric stand mixer. Mix until combined, scraping down the bowl as necessary until combined.
- Knead on medium high for 5 minutes.
- Slowly add additional flour as necessary to help dough come together. Depending on how thick your yogurt is, you may need up to an extra 1/2 cup of flour.
- Dust clean counter top with flour and remove dough from bowl. Knead a few turns until dough is tacky, but not sticky. Roll out and add toppings as desired.
- Bake in a preheated 450 degrees F oven for 10 to 12 minutes.
Why I’ve Stopped Using Google Search
Are Europeans shocked when they first come to the United States?
I know I was.
- Their border police seems to consider it their mission to make you feel unwelcome. Russia was indifferent, China was surprisingly friendly.
- Their luggage system at the airport is primitive.
- The country has more obese people than I've ever seen.
- Technology seems backwards. I've seen coin operated public phones, video rental machines and that was just before COVID.
- The car focus thing is silly, walking a mile to a bar wasn't safe because there was no sidewalk
- Food seems focused on quantity and everything contains sugar! I even had a pack of salt that had 3 ingredients, salt, anti clumping agent and sugar.
- Public bathrooms the stalls never seemed to be ceiling to floor and the doors so low that I had to avert my gaze to avoid looking over them. This makes shitting a semi-public event.
She ain't lyin'
Some fun vintage art
What Happened To Google Search?
This is surprisingly good.
More Magical Thinking As US Raises China Tariffs
On May 14th, President Biden raised tariffs on specific Chinese goods to:
- 25% on steel and aluminium
- 25% on lithium ion electric vehicle batteries
- 25% on PPE
- 25% on some critical minerals
- 25% on ship to shore cranes
- 50% on solar panels
- 50% on semiconductors
- 50% on syringes and needles
- 100% on electric vehicles
These are in addition to the previous Trump tariffs, and more are promised in 2025. Additionally the misnamed US$400 billion Inflation Reduction Act is explicitly protectionist in imposing local content rules for specific parts of electric vehicles (e.g. the battery) with respect to qualifying for purchase and production subsidies. There is also the protectionist US$280 billion Chips and Science Act. Recently, the US also pressured the Mexican government into not financially supporting Chinese EV and battery plants in Mexico. The rationale put behind these additional protectionist measures was put forward in a speech by National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard at the Center for American Progress. In it, Brainard makes completely unsubstantiated claims that China has intentionally created industrial over-capacity in order to globally dominate certain industries.
In the speech Brainard stated that:
The President came to office with a plan to grow the economy from the middle out and bottom up—a sharp departure from the trickle-down approach of the prior administration. On his watch, we are seeing record investment in clean energy and advanced manufacturing.
Investment must be paired with trade enforcement to make sure the comeback we are seeing in communities around the country is not undercut by a flood of unfairly underpriced exports from China. We have learned from the past. There can be no second China Shock here in America.
The above is of course the usual political BS, and bears no relation to reality. As long as US corporations are driven by an extractive and rentier mindset, any subsidies (in the form of direct subsidies or tariffs) will be used more to pad the bottom line than drive new investment. With a heavily oligopolized economy and corrupted politics, the US will also be open to the problems of South American Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) that stemmed from a lack of internal market competition and corrupt state-business relationships.
The following paragraph about the devastating impacts of the first “China Shock” upon American workers and industrial towns overflows with mendacity as it leaves out any mention of the extractive corporate elites and private equity types that outsourced jobs and production to China and other nations, while cutting investment to help goose profits, and fund share buy backs and consultancy fees. Even driving companies into bankruptcy as the most efficient way of feeding of the corporate corpse. The Democratic and Republican parties call such people “political donors”.
We saw what happened in the wake of the first China Shock, which harmed factory towns all over our country. Twelve years ago, here at the Center for American Progress, I discussed my concerns that China’s unbalanced investment- and export-driven growth model was imposing costs on growth in America and globally. I noted that “only by moving from an economy dependent on external demand and exports to one driven by domestic consumer demand” could China achieve its long-term growth goals consistent with broader global growth.
Then there was the usual misstating of the basis of China’s advantages being managed by a highly efficient and effective Party-state not beholden to a ruling capitalist class, and instead focused on the development of China and its people. The very opposite of the neoliberalism, financialization, rentiership, and political corruption (much of it legalized by the US Supreme Court) so prevalent in the US.
The Administration is committed to responsibly managing competition with China, as demonstrated by the President’s regular discussions with President Xi, along with the recent visits by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Treasury. We are committed to cooperating with China to meet the world’s most pressing challenges, including by supporting the deployment of clean energy technologies. Within that broader context, it is important to enforce our trade laws against China’s unfair nonmarket practices to prevent harm to American workers and businesses.
Then there is a further threat to the sovereignty of Mexico, as it has not properly displayed its subject vassal status properly with respect to industrial policy:
In negotiating USMCA, the previous administration did not adequately address the potential transshipment of Chinese exports entering the U.S. market via Mexico. Mexico is an important partner to the US in many areas. We look forward to working with Mexico to address concerns that some Chinese steel exports appear to be flowing through Mexico, and some Chinese auto companies may be considering exporting vehicles and auto parts via Mexico. The USMCA review in 2026 would be an opportunity to further discuss this potential risk.
The truth is that the US has seriously underestimated the Chinese Party-state for the past two plus decades. First of all it thought that it could limit China to the role of provider of cheap workers and markets for US goods, as its corporations moved large chunks of US manufacturing over to China. Instead, China expertly kept control of its financial sector and development model to continuously upgrade its production capabilities. While US corporations were happily throwing away industrial skills, such as tool and die making that take decades to perfect, China was building up those very skills. In the middle of the 2010s the US seemed to at last wake up to the fact that China has become the workshop of the world and had plans to further move up the value added curve; directly threatening US pre-eminence in high end technology industries and the related global supply chains.
But still the US underestimated China as it thought that it could trap China in the “middle income trap” by cutting off access to specific advanced technologies and putting tariffs on Chinese imports to the US. A major part of this was the attempt to completely destroy the leading Chinese technology firm Huawei, which was threatening the Google/Apple monopoly in mobile phone systems as well as leading with respect to 5G technology. The attack worked in the short term, but has now back-fired as Huawei and the Chinese Party-state understood that they would have to develop their own micro-processor supply chain. Thus was born the new Kirin 9010 7-nanometer processor that drives the newly-competitive Huawei phones, with Huawei now equalling Apple in China handset market share; while the company worked out how to use less advanced chips to drive its router products.
In parallel, China has greatly diversified its exports, partly driven by the movement of lower value-added activities offshore. China’s exports to developed nations including the US have stagnated for many years, while its exports to the Global South have doubled over the same period and are now twice those of exports to the developed nations. From 2022 onwards this rebalancing was given an extra boost as the Western sanctions on Russia opened many new opportunities for Chinese corporations. Much of this offshore production still uses Chinese components, but as the country of origin is not China they are not subject to the anti-China tariffs. The US is working to close such loopholes in some cases, as with solar cells, but this avenue still provides many possibilities for tariff-dodging as well as driving exports to nations other than the US. One area that has been predominantly driven by government support and domestic market dynamics is the huge increase in EV production in China, with approximately 50% of domestic new car sales now being EVs. In the past couple of years China has begun expanding its car exports into Asia, MENA, and Europe while also building car factories in such places as Thailand, Brazil, Mexico and Hungary. The Chinese EV industry has now reached such a scale that even foreign manufacturers find it preferable to build factories in China to supply other markets; the supply chain infrastructure is just so much better developed than anywhere else. Resulting in about 70% of all global EV production being in China, and the two leading EV battery manufacturers being Chinese. Even with this, a relatively small share of Chinese car production is exported, in contrast to a Germany which exports the majority of its car production. China is not even exporting EVs from China to the US in any meaningful numbers, so the 100% tariff on such imports actually removes some of the incentives for US manufacturers to move to EVs and serves to protect Tesla’s home market; the market where it makes the majority of its profits.
Fundamentally, the US is attempting to close the stable door after the Chinese dragon has escaped and is half-way to the next town. At the same time, the US has spent many decades gutting its own manufacturing capabilities, destroying its legacy of skilled workers, and replacing executives with engineering and manufacturing backgrounds with those that possess MBAs and legal and marketing qualifications. While strangling new investment, resulting in the ageing of much of what remains of US manufacturing establishments. Just look at the debacle created at Boeing, and the gutting of General Electric, by such executive teams. Another great example is a General Motors that recently announced a US$10 billion stock buyback, and a 33% boost to its dividend, while scaling back EV and self-driving investments and slashing 5,000 jobs.
With this starting point, and a government dominated by an extractive, rentier and financialized ruling capitalist elite, any thought that the US could magically rebuild its manufacturing capabilities in even a decade or two would be delusional. Michael Roberts notes here some fundamental differences between what the US is doing and how Chinese industrial policy is managed:
There are two things here. First, China’s state aid is mostly low-cost loans to industry, while in the OECD it is mainly tax concessions. That’s important because in China’s case, the state banks can direct resources and keep control of the allocation; in the case of the OECD, tax concessions simply leave the private sector to do what they want.
Second, China’s state aid aims at boosting manufacturing and export sectors, not protecting weak and ailing industries from foreign competition. In the case of the US, industrial policy measures like tariffs and the IRA are aimed at doing the opposite. A recent study by IMF economists Cherif and Hasanov found that the latter approach of ‘import substitution’ undermines growth in the long term since it creates ‘excessively coddled, inefficient industries’.
Without some government control over how the state largesse is spent, and the nature of the US capitalist ruling class, the tariffs and subsidies will more fill the pockets of owners and executives than drive a new industrial renaissance. They will also raise prices within the US and retard the US move toward a green economy. Cyrus Janssen captures the delusional nature Biden’s attempt to drive re-industrialization through tariffs and subsidies:
At the same time, China’s retributory moves have hurt US producers, and this will only get worse for the US and its vassals.
As Michael Roberts notes, countries with a higher level of technology than others can gain from an unequal exchange (UE) of value. Although the US trade deficit with China was US$279.4 billion in 2023 it still gets a net transfer of value from China. It gets good on the cheap when measured in hours of labor, but that has been diminishing over time as China climbs the technology ladder and closes the gap with the US:
However, as China’s ‘technology deficit’ with the US began to narrow in the 21st century, US UE gains began to disappear. “China has indeed succeeded in significantly reducing the importance of this unequal exchange, with its disadvantage in the transfer of wealth gradually diminishing: the proportion of this unfavorable transfer in the Chinese added value fell from -3.7 percent to -0.9 percent between 1995 and 2014. As a matter of fact, China had to trade fifty hours of Chinese labor for one hour of U.S. labor in 1995, but only seven in 2014.”
This gap has continued to shrink and Roberts and Carcedi found that “during the post Great Recession years (what I have called the decade of the Long Depression), China’s value loss on UE fell 40% as a share of China GDP." In essence, China is doing to the US what the US, Germany and France did to Britain in the late nineteenth century.
It is this fast-disappearing profit from trade with China that is the real driver of the US attack on the Chinese economy, its exports and semi-conductor industry. The US is losing its imperialist profit extraction from trade with China and increasingly being squeezed out of world markets by Chinese goods.
The decline in US hegemony in trade and production is repeating what happened to UK hegemony in the 19th century. In 1885, Friedrich Engels pointed out that when a capitalist economy is dominant worldwide, it is in favour of ‘free trade’, as Britain was from the 1840s to 1870s. But free trade breeds rivals and after the experience of the depression of the 1880s, British policy changed from ‘free trade’ to protectionist measures for its colonial empire. Engels perceptively identified that it was the depression of the 1880s that broke the British hegemony. “England’s monopoly of the world market is being increasingly shattered by the participation of France, Germany and, above all, of America in world trade, a new form of evening-out appears to come into operation.”
Instead of attempting to come to some kind of mutual accommodation with China, the delusional US ruling class
is determined to strangle the Chinese economy, not only to ‘protect’ its weakening industrial sectors, but also eventually bring about ‘regime change’ in China itself. The US reckons it still has time as China and the so-called BRICS nations are still well behind the economic and financial power of the US-led imperialist bloc.
And as Roberts notes, “the cost to the US economy and the profitability of US industry will be considerable, and even more to the real incomes of Americans. But America’s ruling elite see that cost as worthwhile if it brings China to its knees”. With those lower incomes will come the increasing authoritarianism required to keep the lid on a boiling social and economic pot. None of this will produce a good outcome for the general US population, and probably in the end not even the US capitalist ruling elite, but that US elite never seems to learn; as with the utter failure of its sanctions designed to harm the Russian economy and drive regime change. Instead Russia has prospered with 5.4% annualized GDP growth in the first quarter of 2024, and President Putin’s approval ratings have remained extremely high.
Without a complete reorientation of the capitalist ruling class toward more domestic competition and a state-managed integrated industrial policy the US will continue to be beaten by China. The response may be a deepening tariff wall that cuts the US of from leading technologies, creating a parallel of communist East Germany.
After implementing the self-harming sanctions against Russia, Europe will now come under pressure from the US to join it in its crusade to hamstring China’s technological advancement; after European chip manufacturers have already been sideswiped by the US chip technology export bans on China. This has already started, for example with a speech delivered by Janet Yellen on May 21st. As the New York Times noted:
Following her speech, Ms. Yellen told reporters that the United States and countries in Europe have different concerns when it comes to commerce with China and, as a result, they could use different tools to address them. But she added that because many of the concerns about China’s heavy subsidization of exports are broadly shared, it is “more forceful to communicate to China as a group.”
The same article also referenced a speech made by German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Stockholm the previous week:
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech in Stockholm last week, “We should not forget: European manufacturers, and also some American ones, are successful on the Chinese market and also sell a lot of vehicles that are produced in Europe to China.” He added that at least half of electric vehicles imported to Europe from China were Western brands.
With European, especially German, manufacturers suffering from the greatly increased energy prices produced by the sanctions and the destruction of Nordstream II (the culprit of which Germany seems to have no interest in finding, at least publicly), the last thing that European industry needs is more negative impacts. With a stable trade deficit between Europe and China, and large and increasing investments in China by European manufacturers, any trade measures taken against China could significantly impact an already weak European industrial sector. Especially when China has been forthright in stating its commitment to retaliate against any such measures. It has already launched an anti-dumping investigation into a widely used plastic that it imports from the US, EU, Taiwan and Japan, and has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on imported cars with large engines; directly targeting the German luxury manufacturers.
Europe will also be heavily dependent upon Chinese green technologies and imports to drive its commitments to reducing fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. A drive which will have the side benefit of greatly reducing Europe’s large oil and gas imports. So this will be a significant test of the European capitalist elite’s ability to stand up to their US master. Will they cave in and once again sacrifice Europe’s industry to prove their fealty and vassalage, or will they be able to resist the pressure from the US. The latter case, perhaps partially obfuscated through performative but not substantive actions, would show a limitation of US power in Europe. The former would confirm Europe’s status as a true vassal of the US, as European governments significantly increase defence spending (much of which acts as a subsidy program for US arms manufacturers) against a mythical threat of Russian invasion.
Please just get off the show...
Easy Pizza Sauce
This is the same sauce used by many pizzerias. The thickness depends upon the amount of the water used. There is no cooking needed!
Ingredients
- 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
- 1 1/2 to 2 tomato paste cans water
- 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- Salt, to taste
- Ground black pepper, to taste
- 1/2 tablespoon dried oregano
- 1/2 tablespoon dried basil
- 1/2 teaspoon dried crushed rosemary
Instructions
- Mix well the tomato paste, water and olive oil.
- Add remaining ingredients. Mix well and let stand several hours to let flavors blend.
- No cooking is necessary. Just spread onto the dough.
Absolutely Anything (Full Movie | Watch FREE)
Today is a REAL TREAT.
This is a recent British Science Fiction movie, and it is a HOOT! But, if you go onto the internet the first fifty or so review are all bad. With quotes such as "Hollywood could do it better", and what not. Nonsense. Someone paid to give this movie bad reviews.
It's a solid 6/10.
Though if you look at this movie from the eyes of intention, it becomes a 8/10. Having your wishes come true is always interesting to watch, and the side unintentional consequences are often amusing given the proper context. I especially love the relationship twistings.
Anyways, here's what IMBD has to say...
Little story about almighty power, when phrased correctly The absolute power of wish fulfillment has been connected to many beings, genie and god among others, but now even aliens can make one's wish come true. Absolutely Anything is a simple film blessed with nifty premise and charming charismatic lead in Simon Pegg. It's a light casual watch that surprisingly heartwarming and incredibly witty beyond the occasional quirky display, even though the premise doesn't have much depth. Neil (Simon Pegg) is an ordinary teacher who has been given ultimate power by a group of aliens for the purpose of judging the entire earth. The plot and cast are rather familiar, including the love interest by Kate Beckinsale along with the usual best friend and silly talking dog. It's pretty hard to fail on delivering a talking dog, especially voiced by Robin Williams. First and foremost, the humor is fun and fairly amusing. The script offers some ridiculous situations, often presenting these scenes for Simon Pegg to shine, and that he does. His character is utterly identifiable, wishing assortments of petty stuffs and ending up with stupid mistakes by simple poor choice of words. Some of these might feel overdone and the movie just goes for the boundary of safe route. Pegg also seems like able to crate chemistry with the cast, and everyone is quite likable, aside from a few over-the-top moments for a couple of them. The movie doesn't venture into deep thought about absolute power or the logic of bending reality, it merely a mild enjoyment with nice characters, most of whom work in platonic relationship. One extra credit for the presentation is how the visual looks sophisticated, it uses the scenery of England and the special effects fairly well. Absolutely Anything is a much humbler film than the title suggests, it provides ample of light entertainment with a commendable performance by Simon Pegg even if the premise feels outdated towards the end. Plus, having Robin Williams again, even in doggy form is a nice treat.
Free to watch. Please take the time to enjoy this.